


Punishment and Grace

by Dorinda



Category: Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2003
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-25
Updated: 2003-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:19:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/pseuds/Dorinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A scene set during Chapter 3, when Raskolnikov wakes from his fever and Razumikhin looks after him, plus an epilogue. <em>It was a great love, a faithfulness that could not be borne any longer.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Punishment and Grace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alestar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alestar/gifts).



Razumikhin sat so close beside him on the sofa, holding him and supporting him. Too close, too snug, fastening on like a lamprey. It was really quite intolerable, thought Raskolnikov, the way this great, rangy bear of a man managed him, daring to handle him like a best beloved doll, his big arm cradling Raskolnikov across his lap without show of effort. 

"Do you have any soup?" Razumikhin asked the landlady's servant, and he sent her away to fetch it. Then he fell to examining Raskolnikov intently, touching his forehead and the pulse at his throat, chafing his wrists. 

Raskolnikov said nothing, was resolved to say nothing, to let the blunt horror and dizziness of this moment just wash over him, as he had let every moment since he'd felt the old woman's blood sticky and hot on his hands. 

"Oh, you are ill, Rodion Romanovich, and no mistake," said Razumikhin, peering into each of his eyes in turn. "But we shall soon have you well again. You just haven't eaten properly. So you'll eat what Nastasya brings you, won't you, there's a good fellow." 

Intolerable. This closeness, the pressure of his limbs, even his cool breath brushing across Raskolnikov's brow...It felt cold and seething at once, a river whirlpool, and tangled round him like fresh spiderwebs. Why must everyone press against him so? Why would Razumikhin not see that Raskolnikov could no longer be touched, that he was sinking further and further away, into a realm where Razumikhin could not and must not follow? 

Throughout his delirium, Razumikhin had been close by. Flashes of memory came to him, but enough remained dark and confused that he could not be certain he had not given himself away. And with every second Razumikhin remained so close, the danger surely heightened. He must be gone, he must! Not only from Raskolnikov's side, but from his life entire! But sunken into himself, watching Razumikhin's face showing every shade of feeling, like wisps of summer cloud, Raskolnikov knew he must be careful. If he pushed Razumikhin, ordered him, even struck him, Razumikhin would surely just blink his warm, puzzled eyes and hold him closer, pity and cherish him, call back the doctor. It was a great love, a faithfulness that could not be borne any longer. He took a breath, and with a convulsive shudder he let the red haze creep up over his vision once more, backing into a corner of his mind like a desperate and wounded beast. 

The shudder had not gone unnoticed, passing through Raskolnikov's frame and into Razumikhin, who still held him so close and would not let him fall. 

"Easy, now," Razumikhin said, his brows drawing together. "You'll be all right. And there's the money, do you see, on the table--the money your mother arranged for. We'll use it for food, and good warm clothes. Perhaps a new blanket, eh?" He passed one hand behind Raskolnikov's head and supported it with no show of strain. 

Raskolnikov, watching his own actions as if from far away, shifted in Razumikhin's lap, nudging closer. "I...do not want a new blanket," he said, his voice a croak. 

A smile, fond and tolerant, quirked Razumikhin's lips and eyes. "Perhaps Father Christmas will bring you one whether you want it or not. He has been known to visit certain people in summer, when they've been very good." 

"What if...you were my blanket?" persisted Raskolnikov, twining his arms around him, feeling the muscles and hollows of Razumikhin's body against his own, coursing with life. 

Razumikhin's face hid nothing, not even this, this great current of surprise, of wonder...of tenderness. "Why--why, Rodya, my dear fellow--" 

Nastasya entered with the soup. 

As she set the table, Razumikhin watched her with a strange and dazzled look in his eye, as if he were really watching something else. He was quiet; his heartbeat had increased against Raskolnikov's side. And once the mustard pot had been arranged near the plate of beef and the soup tureen, Razumikhin hastily sent her to get the landlady to order some beer, which would keep her away a while. He called her "Nastasyushka" and smiled at her, and she went away both blushing and grumbling. 

"Now, then," Razumikhin said softly, looking down into Raskolnikov's upturned face. "Now, then, what is this, eh? Is it the fever again, talking nonsense?" 

But Raskolnikov could feel the tension of Razumikhin's body, a subtle vibration that had been awakened and now trembled for release, stronger each second. "Not nonsense," he said, "but good sense. Come. My good friend, my only friend. My heart's friend." 

His hands were still weak compared to Razumikhin's power, so that on his own he would never have been able to draw Razumikhin's head down against his own, to kiss him. But not a friend's kiss. He opened his lips to taste him, to suckle at him, to growl into his mouth like a wild animal. And Razumikhin responded with a shiver, clutching and awkward and heartbreakingly open. That part of Raskolnikov that watched from a distance watched with a dawning sorrow, and wept. 

For Razumikhin was smiling into his kisses, even while his strong body trembled and tautened with fire and need. He smiled with an honest joy that had no place here against Raskolnikov's own skin, crawling slippery and fetid with the unseen blood that would not wash away. 

He felt that he could even taste that blood in his mouth, coating his tongue, caught in his teeth, as he pulled back to speak. "This is what you want, isn't it. Isn't this why you have stayed with me all this time?" 

It took a moment for his words and his tone to sink in, past the clear surface of that bright joy. But when it did, Razumikhin's expression slowly began to change like the troubled ripples in a pool at the fall of a stone. "What?" 

"Payment." Raskolnikov slithered obscenely against him. "I'm willing to pay you in this coin, if that is the price." 

"Rodya...I..." 

"I have seen how you look at me, Dmitri Prokofich. You have held me and bathed my face and spoken to me when you thought I could not hear you. But I know why you did it. I know where your friendship truly rests. And I will no longer resist you." 

The ruin of joy, of hope, was so swift and so terrible that even from far within himself, increasingly apart and distant from all human contact, Raskolnikov could hardly bear to watch. And here was where he expected Razumikhin to act, to thrust him aside and flee, to roar at him and break the bond once and forever. And then Raskolnikov would be safe at last. No one would remain to disturb his silence, to keep on with this infuriating determination to be with him and reach for him. 

Razumikhin untangled himself from Raskolnikov very slowly, very carefully, as if he were suddenly grown old and his bones gone to glass. He rose and looked down with a face as grave and as sorrowful as in Raskolnikov's oldest dreams of heaven. 

But he did not flee. 

He ladled soup into a bowl, took up a spoon, and seated himself once more at Raskolnikov's side. Again his arm slipped round and half-supported Raskolnikov against his body. There was one momentary flinch, but then an uncoiling of tension and an upwelling of nothing but the same strength. The same care. 

"You have to eat, Rodion Romanovich," Razumikhin said firmly. "You have to get well. You have to--" here his voice broke for just a moment, just a whisper, before he could finish-- "--to come back to us." 

And spoonful by spoonful, Razumikhin blew gently on the soup and then slipped it between Raskolnikov's lips, dabbing at stray drops on his chin with the shabby sleeve of his own coat. Raskolnikov swallowed in a daze. Between spoonfuls, he opened his mouth to speak, although he didn't know quite what he would say. 

Nastasya Petrovna returned with two bottles of beer.  
 

* * *

  


Seven years he had passed in Siberia, sometimes like taking seven breaths, and sometimes like climbing seven mountains. Raskolnikov stood at last on both feet, a free man, and a humble one. Before him in the path stood a figure both familiar and strange to him, the shabby coat replaced by one not opulent, but warm and neat and brushed smooth. Despite all that had happened, despite his friend's steadfastness at his side even beyond guilt and prison and exile, Raskolnikov hesitated. 

"Well then, Rodion Romanovich," said Razumikhin, his voice as bluff and guileless as ever it had been. He held out both hands. 

Raskolnikov went to him, taking both his big hands and pressing them fervently. He could not speak. But he suddenly felt he could smile, and he did, watching its reflection dawn in Razumikhin's face. 

On an impulse, desiring now to fill all those spaces he had once worked so hard to keep empty, he pulled Razumikhin toward him and kissed each cheek in turn. "Oh, my brother." 

Razumikhin returned his embraces heartily and clapped him on the back. "How glad Sonya will be to see you! She sent me to bring you home at last. And Dunya and I have set up housekeeping right next door. Just as I dreamed." 

Slipping his arm through Razumikhin's, Raskolnikov set off down the path toward the town, toward this new life he had worked so hard to understand. "So how is Dunechka now? I know our mother's death was a special grief to her." 

It was unlike Razumikhin to be so quiet, and for so long. Their footsteps were the only sound to be heard for a time, until Raskolnikov stopped and squeezed his arm, looking at him intently. "Dmitri Prokofich," he said. "What's the matter? There's nothing wrong with Dunya, is there?" 

"No!" said Razumikhin at once, holding on tight to Raskolnikov's hand. He lowered his eyes for a moment, then raised them with an expression both tender and frightened. "I-- Your sister is-- She is very like you, Rodya." 

In those stumbling words, Raskolnikov heard a confession and an echo of his long-ago crime--not the crime for which he was sentenced, but another crime, and perhaps in some ways a deeper one, against this most faithful heart. He reached out at once, gathering Razumikhin close again. Razumikhin clung to him and let out a deep, troubled sigh. 

Raskolnikov rocked him slightly. "It's all right. It's all _right_ now. Eh? Here we are together, as a family. Nothing will undo that. Nothing ever can." 

The only answer was an uneasy shifting from the body within his arms, an uneasiness that did not sit well on him. Raskolnikov felt, all at once and with some surprise, that he himself was the stronger one. He held his friend in turn and braced him, as he had been so constantly, so lovingly held and braced while wandering and ill, even as he scratched to get away and be lost forever. 

"Dmitri," Raskolnikov said softly. "Dimi. Don't be afraid." 

He stroked Razumikhin's tumbled hair and soothed him. And the last of the darkness about their hearts fell away before the mystery of their linked futures, the bond that held them now renewed and evergreen. 

 


End file.
